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Formerly Bill and Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure, this is the quest for our future in a country ten minutes out of the Stone Age

14 Jul 2009 @ 3:41 PM

The new digs

After I finally got to sleep last night I slept for a good ten hours in a temporary room. Whew.

The temporary room was comfortable, and it had furniture. No chair, but it had a desk, a bed, a very nice wall locker of local manufacture and another piece of furniture of plywood construction which is more of a standard b-hut furnishing. Today I moved into another temporary room in another building which is more like a barracks with a hallway and private rooms off of it. It is linked to another similar building by the shower and latrine facility, which is very impressive for Afghanistan. Nicely tiled, clean and roomy.

The room I moved into is very clean. It is also nearly clean of furniture, the only furnishing being a bunk bed. My duffel bags and ruck sack are my furniture. That and a purloined body armor stand which now proudly holds my armor and helmet in the corner near the door. The whole room is about the size of a commercial broom closet. Again; it is clean, lockable and mine. For now. They tell me I will get a larger room soon when some people move out. I will look forward to that, but this is fine in the meantime. I’m grateful, in fact.

The camp here is extremely nice. Small, but very nice. It is calm and sensible, too. None of the usual “too close to the flagpole” shenanigans. Whew. More on that another time.

I got to meet many of the other people on the team today, and they all seemed happy that I am here (finally.) This process has literally taken months and months. I haven’t written about it because it could have come apart at the seams at any point along the way, and that would have been difficult to explain at best or could have appeared to be BS at worst. Not wanting that complication, I thought it best to keep it to myself. In any case, they have been expecting me here for a long time, and now I’m finally here.

It’s a great mission. Hopefully we can make a difference and hopefully I can be helpful with that. I can tell you that I am doing something that I deeply believe in. Again, more on that later. I promise this all makes sense.

I got to see my first camel spider of the second tour tonight. One of the young’uns down the hall started yelling, “Hey, come look at this! What is that thing? It’s huge!” I walked down the hall and there it sat, looking at me as if to say, “Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you!”

The young’un shoo’d it out the door without harming it.

Yep, I’m in Afghanistan again. It feels oddly normal. One difference that I’ve noticed is that there are more lights at night in Kabul. That’s a small sign, but the electricity that we Americans take for granted has been hit or miss here, even in the capitol. To see lights on such a broad area of Kabul at night means something’s being done. There is obviously a lot that needs to be done, but it’s a good sign on the infrastructure side.

On a separate note, Vampire 6 left the country last night. We missed each other. He was probably at Bagram while I was waiting for my flight to Kabul. Godspeed for a safe trip home, Vampires. Job well done. Don’t ever think for a minute that it doesn’t matter. It does. Baton passed. I got it.

Responses to this post » (4 Total)

Glad that you are getting settled in. We’ll have to see what can be done about your sparse room.

“It feels oddly normal”, I’m glad that you had that sense of well-being and normalcy on your return. It’s great that you actually want to be there. So many don’t. Pretty darn sure that you will achieve as much if not more than what was accomplished on the first tour. Gotta have faith, ya know?

Too bad that you missed Vampire 06. He and his team have made a huge impact on his AO. We’re proud of them, and of you ALL.

Good luck brother! The suck continues to be the same no matter how much it changes, the days of Chai and Nan are back upon you and they need you more than ever there. Sorry I missed you in Kabul, as I write this I’m sitting in the Hyatt and still looking for IEDs under everything. Good luck and stay safe, I may see you there sooner than later!